Naked Hero - The Journey Away

main thrust of it anyway, the details were irrelevant. After five minutes of her ranting about fire and damnation he had endured enough and interrupted her diatribe.
    “Well, thanks for calling, Mum. It’s been a real treat. Are there any more supportive messages you’ve got for me before I hand you back to Fiona? ...No, I didn’t think so. Goodbye then.”
    The handset was left on the couch for Fiona to retrieve. Lewis heard her attempt to calm his mother down as he stormed towards his bedroom and slammed the door closed behind him.
    He lay down on his bed and tried to block out the call - block out her words and her bigoted tone. But it was an impossible task. All he could do was lie there and dwell on a relationship that was never strong in the first place, but had slowly disintegrated and now lay in tatters. When he had told his mother he was gay, Lewis knew that it was the final nail in the coffin, not the first. That had come with another coffin... his dad’s.
    Lewis loved his father – the perfect man in his eyes. He loved him with a passion so much that it hurt, even when he was still alive. He was always there for him as a constant support – up until his tragic death that was. Lewis could tell his dad anything. Even when he did wrong, his dad would understand and try to put him back on a path that they both knew was right – Catholic dogma never came into it, just common sense and what was best for his boy. He seemed to have endless time for his only child, warm and caring, full of sharing - unlike the mother who was cold and critical, hypocritical to the religion she was forever spouting. It was his father who had introduced Lewis to the game of tennis at an early age, finding a reason to take the lad out of the unhappy family house and spend precious time together doing something they both enjoyed. It was the father who had nurtured him in the early days and had encouraged him when Lewis wanted to take it more seriously, accompanying him to lessons whenever he could. It was his father who had enlisted the support of his old school friend, Jim Murdoch, to assess Lewis’s potential and eventually gain his acceptance into the Scottish Tennis Programme. It was his father with whom Lewis had shared a dream that eventually was made real, but for only the one. Because it was his father who had died in a car accident when Lewis was twelve, and left the lad more crushed than the mangled cadaver.
    Neither he nor his mother could comprehend the loss, which they had viewed from radically different perspectives. Nor could they help each other come to terms with it all. They both retreated into their own grief – one turning to God, the other turning his back on Him, blaming The Father for taking his father. The chasm which had already existed between mother and son widened by the day. Lewis learned at an early age what it felt like to be alone. What it felt like to have the world in the palm of his hands and see it run through his fingers as it turned to dust – ‘ashes to ashes’ indeed. Introvert by nature, he had no close friends to turn to. Every egg that he had lay in one basket, and had been smashed by a truck on the M8 motorway that linked Edinburgh to his adopted home city of Glasgow. Lewis went in freefall, withdrawing further and further into himself, unable to face the breaking morning and its sick joke of a new dawn, never mind any opponent that vainly waited for him on a tennis court. If his mother was aware of her son’s desperate plight, she had no solace to offer, no help to give beyond her Faith which only made matters worse. It was Jim Murdoch who came along two months later and rescued the boy with a gift.
    “Honour the memory by making him proud of you, Lewis,” he had said.
    It took a bit of time, but it did the trick. Lewis sorted himself out, because Jim Murdoch had given him a single-minded purpose that drove him for the next eight years.

Chapter 10
    Lewis showered again in an attempt to wash away his seething anger. Then dressed in a shirt and trousers he went back into the living room, going straight to Fiona who now sat on the couch, kissed her on the cheek and whispered in her ear, “Sorry about that.”
    “It’s alright, Lewis, are you okay now?”
    “Aye, I’ll be fine. I just need to get out for a bit.”
    She held his smile for a few moments then nodded her understanding. It conveyed no hint of judgement - it never did.
    Jim was still at the table. He’d been